WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY SMOKING AT THE PSL INDABA YESTERDAY?

Robson Sharuko

Metros Editor

WHAT the hell were they smoking at the Premier Soccer League extraordinary meeting in Harare yesterday where delegates came up with a crazy proposal to freeze relegation this season?

What was really going on in the minds of the 18 delegates, who represent all the PSL clubs, and their leadership, when they came up with this proposal-plucked-from-hell?

What had they really drunk to get to the extent that they can lose their minds and, in their collective display of craziness and a touch of madness, they came up with such an anti-football proposal which was an insult to everything the beautiful game represents?

How could the league’s leadership, in the very first major test of their ability to lead the PSL, allow their members to spit in the face of Fair Play and try and dodge the bullet of failure in such a scandalous way?

Did they realise that this was an insult on their flagship sponsors, their all-weather friends at Delta Beverages, who have stood with them in both storms and sunshine, because this proposal reduced the PSL into a boozers’ league?

Did it dawn on them that all the coaches, who have been fired this season for poor results, would have been handed the right to sue the PSL for tarnishing their names using a deception that this was a competitive league when, in fact, it was a social league?

What about the fans?

In Charles Mabika’s world, they are the owners of the game.

And, how would the PSL have faced all those fans, who shed tears when their teams lost and slipped towards relegation, and told them that they wasted their emotions because this was all just a hoax and no club will be relegated this year?

Would the league have reimbursed all the fans who paid their money to watch the PSL games, in the belief that they were watching a competitive top-flight league, when in reality this was no different from a Sunday social league?

Did it dawn on the PSL members that their actions were a direct insult to the good work that the likes of Kelvin Kaindu and Genesis Mangombe have done to keep their clubs in the top-flight league because, without any relegation, the value they have added would have been meaningless?

Did it dawn on them that, even if their proposal was right, the timing of it all was wrong – with just a game remaining in the championship race – ensuring there will just be dead rubbers on Sunday where there were supposed to be some titanic battles?

If they scrapped relegation this season, wouldn’t they have opened a window of madness in the league because then what would have stopped the clubs, which are supposed to be relegated next season, going to court to stop their relegation?

Did it dawn on the PSL leaders that given half of the clubs in their league – Dynamos, Highlanders, Manica Diamonds, Triangle, Bikita Minerals, GreenFuel, Yadah and Kwekwe United – are all involved in the relegation matrix, it didn’t make sense for them to vote on this subject?

With all these clubs likely to vote for relegation to be frozen, what this meant was that there was no way that the league could have expected such a vote to be decided by wisdom, instead of personal interests, as was the case yesterday.

How different is this from asking chickens if they really want us to celebrate Christmas?

How do the PSL even allow a club like Kwekwe United, which was relegated a long time ago, to participate in a vote where the members decide whether or not clubs should be relegated this season?

Yes, there has been a precedent.

The Mexican top-flight league suspended relegation and promotion in 2019 for five years because of the Coronavirus outbreak. That makes sense because the world was dealing with a beast which it had never seen before in recent years.

This can’t be compared to the circus which we saw at the PSL EGM yesterday.

“Chris Sibanda, Morrison Sifelani, Victor Zvobgo and Roger Muhlw and others didn’t create the PSL for chaos, politics, egos or greed,” said Nodumo Nyathi, a card-carrying Highlanders member. “They built it for progress, professionalism and respect for the game.”

It’s clear that those who gathered in Harare yesterday did not respect the game.